Sein would never have imagined it, nor could he figure out how Ash, playing cards for the first time, could be that strong.
But, after Fern and Frieren understood the situation a little, and based on their understanding of Ash, they could more or less tell, he had probably cheated.
After all, under normal circumstances, Ash should have lost at the beginning. But there was no way he would accept defeat. Using the absurdly fast speed he had shown when slaying the mountain lord and applying it to playing cards in a village, that was basically open cheating, wasn't it?
It would be strange if he didn't completely dominate. Even the so-called gambling king wouldn't have hands that fast.
As a warrior standing at the peak of "humanity" playing cards against villagers, aside from what Fern called bullying, there really wasn't any other possible outcome.
Normally, no one would expect such an absurdly strong warrior to gamble, but…
"Lord Ash, honestly, what am I even supposed to say to you?", Even though having her head patted had dispelled most of her anger, Fern still looked troubled after he not only gambled, but also calmly admitted upon returning that he had cheated using hand speed.
Someone who should clearly be an incredible person, yet he gambled with villagers and even cheated.
Meanwhile, he silently lay down on the bed, pulled the blanket over himself, and pretended to sleep. Fern scolded him a bit at the side, but there was nothing she could do about him.
All she could do was remind him to brush his teeth before sleeping, then temporarily return to her room to pack their luggage.
Frieren, on the other hand, remained seated on the chair by the bed, freely swinging her legs. Only after quite a while did she look up at him, lift her leg, and without any politeness, shove her ice-cold little foot straight into his blanket, even placing it directly on his stomach.
"Wake up. Fern's gone. I have something I want to talk to you about."
"Do you have any manners? If you have something to say, just say it. Who sticks their foot straight into someone else's bed? And..."
"I took my shoes off, and I washed right before getting on the bed."
He opened his eyes and launched into a string of complaints, but before he could finish, Frieren, expressionless, shut him down with a single sentence.
He fell silent for a moment, then couldn't help letting out a long sigh. Without getting up, he turned onto his side and stared at her seriously.
"Even though I'd like to praise you for taking off your shoes, you might lack basic common sense. What you're doing is still extremely rude, you know?"
"Is that so? But didn't you say before that friends shouldn't care about little things? We've known each other for over a thousand years, right? And honestly, when you woke me up back then, you directly—"
"Alright! Let's put this topic aside for now. You win!", The memories Frieren suddenly brought up made him sit up at once and interrupt her, "Let's talk about what you actually wanted to say."
"What? Why are you suddenly so guilty," Having spent so long together, even the unusually slow Frieren could roughly sense his thoughts.
But since there was something else at hand, she didn't pursue it further. She simply left her foot inside his blanket to warm up, looked straight into his eyes, and slowly said, "Whether Sein can become a companion or not aside, I think he should become an adventurer."
"Because you see your past self in him, right?", Ash lay on his side, lifted the blanket slightly, glanced at the small foot wrapped once again in black tights after she rushed downstairs earlier, and couldn't be bothered to say more.
He just sighed, lay back down, and rested his cheek on one hand, his tone casual and unintentional.
"Because it feels like you're seeing your past self, you don't like him. That's why earlier you used that hard-to-explain 'racial disgust,' right?"
"Huh? How did you know?"
"How many years do you think we've known each other?", He smiled faintly, yawned, then lay face-down on the bed again and closed his eyes, too lazy to look at the all-too-familiar person in front of him, "Maybe, I understand you even better than you understand yourself."
"Is that so? Yeah, that's possible. Even though being seen through like this is a bit unpleasant," With no room to refute, Frieren muttered in an annoyed tone.
But beneath that annoyance, a faint smile quietly bloomed. In a tone that sounded almost provocative yet oddly gentle, she countered,
"Don't underestimate me either. I might not be as dull as you think."
"And why do you say that?"
"You're hiding something from me. Something very important."
"That's what you think?"
"That's right. But I won't ask. I'll wait, because you're my most important friend," Frieren looked at his eyes as he opened them again, and smiled lightly.
"That's a bit unexpected."
"Be as surprised as you like. And then, before your life truly reaches its end, I'll keep waiting, for the day you confess to me."
On what seemed like an utterly ordinary night, Ash and Frieren finally had an honest, open exchange for the first time in a long while, albeit only the tip of the iceberg.
———
However, the next morning—
Perhaps feeling that what she said last night was a bit embarrassing, Frieren chose to act exactly as usual, as if that deep conversation had only been a dream and never happened.
She naturally dragged Fern and Ash into the Harvest Festival celebrations, sparing no effort in trying to persuade Sein as well.
And although Sein was an upgraded wine-and-meat priest, drinking, eating meat, smoking, and even gambling, he was unexpectedly diligent in the village. Preparing decorations, helping farmers harvest vegetables, and all sorts of miscellaneous tasks, he did them all.
Even the wine-and-meat priest was seriously helping prepare for the Harvest Festival, so Ash and Fern were also pulled by Frieren to work together and she kept persuading him throughout.
No matter how hard Sein tried to make them give up, it was useless. He couldn't ignore the dreams and hope in their eyes, things he himself had once yearned for.
Those eyes, completely different from his current self, like those of old companions, were so dazzling that he couldn't look at them directly.
But, there was one exception.
That was Ash.
Ash didn't have that same scent of dreams and hope. During their time together, Sein even found himself recalling the strange sense of discord he had felt when Ash entered the church, which then quickly faded away, making him doubt whether it had just been his imagination.
Even now, he still couldn't understand what that sense of discord in the church had been about.
Among the three, Ash's presence was especially unique. He wasn't like Frieren and Fern, whose eyes shone with pure adventure and dreams, nor was he the carefree type of adventurer.
In his actions, he was indeed the most free-spirited one. Yet Ash always carried a faint sense of tension, as if he were constantly on the brink of battle.
Seemingly carefree, yet day after day he trained diligently. That kind of discipline made Sein feel ashamed of himself.
Just being together with the three of them made him inexplicably feel that they weren't walking the same path. The difference in atmosphere was simply too great, and each of them gave off a different impression.
Yet those two trusted Ash more than anyone else, which made Sein curious about what their past together had been like.
But as the days passed one by one, he still found no answer.
At the same time, Sein's firm refusal left Frieren with no suitable method.
Her frustration eventually led her, one evening, to look toward Ash, who was once again training his magic by the small river beside the church.
Frieren plopped down beside him and casually shoved him.
"You and Sein seem to get along surprisingly well. You should probably know what it takes to make him join, right?"
"He likes older women."
"That I already knew. But he seems to think, like you, that I'm not an older woman at all. Even though I'm older than all of you... so strange," Frieren tilted her head with her arms crossed, wearing a genuinely baffled expression.
'Is there really anything hard to understand about that? I can't understand how you can lack self-awareness this badly at all.'
Ash glanced at her flat, modest chest and her overly petite build, but when he noticed Fern looking over as well, he forcibly suppressed the urge to say what he was thinking.
Frieren, however, noticed nothing at all. After thinking it over and still not understanding, she simply stood up, showing a strangely resolute expression, as if she were about to use her ultimate move.
"There's no choice. Even though I don't really want to do this, this is the only option now."
"Based on my understanding of you, that's definitely not a good choice."
"Trust me! And then... leave it to me. I'll let you see properly, my charm as an older sister!", Frieren looked down at him with a confident smile.
He showed no enthusiasm at all. Covering his face, he sighed.
"I already feel like I can picture you completely ruining your later years."
"Lord Ash, what exactly are you talking about?"
"You'll find out in a bit..."
"Mm~", Fern looked a little unhappy, but she silently followed the two of them.
———
After waiting by the river near the church for a while, Frieren spotted her target.
She quickly popped out of the bushes and suddenly called out to the priest heading toward the church.
"Sein!"
"Huh?", Thinking she had some new trick, Sein turned back warily, and then—
Frieren spread her right hand from her lips, puckered up, and blew him a kiss. At the very end, she deliberately made a "chu~" sound.
In that instant, the air suddenly went completely silent.
After a long while, Sein finally snapped out of his daze and looked at Ash in confusion.
"What is this woman doing?"
"As you can see, probably blowing a kiss," Ash covered his forehead with one hand and avoided his gaze, while Frieren stood there with her hands on her hips, completely self-unaware, wearing a smug expression, "Hehe~"
"I can see that. But why suddenly blow a kiss?", Sein's face looked like he'd swallowed a fly.
"Simply put, she's trying to show her charm this way so you'll willingly join us," Ash was so embarrassed he felt like clawing out a three-bedroom apartment from the ground, and he turned to flee the scene of this social death.
Sein, wearing that same swallowed-a-fly expression, waved his hand.
"I'm begging you, please take this kid away."
"I was planning to," Ash sighed, grabbed Frieren by the back of her collar, and turned to leave, trying to stop her from further embarrassing herself.
However, the moment he turned around, he saw Fern with her face completely red, covering her mouth, clearly having suffered a huge shock from Frieren's actions.
"What are you doing?"
"F-Frieren-sama... so-so mature! So sexy!"
"H-Huh?"
This time, even Ash was stunned.
The child he had raised turned out to be so, 'What should I call it, innocent? I can't tell.' All he felt was a splitting headache.
'Could it be that among all these people, the only normal one is me?', he couldn't help thinking that.
Meanwhile, Frieren, being dragged backward across the ground, rubbed her chin and muttered to herself.
"How strange. It worked really well before. Himmel even fainted on the spot. But Heiter, Eisen, and Ash had no reaction at all…"
"Have you ever considered the possibility that you were being tricked?"
"Master said it doesn't work on those who are too young, which means..."
"I'm not that young to begin with! And honestly, you look like a lol!. You don't have the right to say others are young at all! Normally, anyone who falls for this would be the strange one!"
"Wait!", Frieren struggled free from his grip, puckered her lips again, kissed her left hand, and blew him an ultra-close-range flying kiss, even remembering to add the "chu~" at the end.
"...."
"Is it really a distance issue? At this unprecedented distance, even Ash should—OW?"
Seeing him freeze like a statue, Frieren broke into an overly radiant smile. But before she could enjoy it for even three seconds, Ash punched her on the head. She yelped, clutching her head and squatting down, complaining unhappily.
"What are you doing?"
"Sorry, I felt looked down on for a moment and couldn't hold back."
"There's zero sincerity in your apology!"
"Because I really have none. And I hit you with a clear conscience."
"You jerk!"
His words matching his heart perfectly made Frieren so angry she wanted to jump up and hit his head back.
But Ash shook his head as if giving up and left her behind, walking quickly toward the uncle in the distance who was still holding his head, wondering how to drive them away.
———
Even though she'd been suddenly hit on the head, Ash's direction still made Frieren place great hopes in him.
After all, during this time, she'd been doing almost all the work herself. And even if she didn't want to admit it, she knew that at least when it came to emotional intelligence, Ash was a bit better than her.
She was full of hope, but Sein's mood was the complete opposite.
That prank-like flying kiss made him almost certain, this group was just fooling around and using him for entertainment.
Seeing Ash finally walk over on his own initiative for the first time, he couldn't help relaxing a little. He took a deep drag of his cigarette and laughed.
"So you've finally gotten tired of playing house and decided to give up on her behalf?"
"Not exactly."
"What, you're still not giving up? Even though you look like... at least from my point of view, whether I join you or not doesn't really matter to you? Like you're just playing house with them."
"It doesn't matter. But Frieren can't stand people like you, who stop moving forward for some reason just like she once did. So I can only help a bit."
Ash didn't deny the playing house. But what he said made Sein smile bitterly.
"What, you really dote on her, huh? Even though you argue all the time?"
"We've known each other a long time. Arguing a little is normal, right?", He shrugged helplessly, "We're both men, so I'll skip the nonsense and get straight to the point."
"What do you want to say?"
"Stop hiding it and say the real reason you don't want to leave the village. And 'it's already too late' doesn't count. That's not the real reason, at least not from what I've seen these days."
"You really are more troublesome than Frieren."
Looking at his expression, clearly not planning to give up until he got an answer, Sein let out a long sigh and scratched his head hard. In order to finally drive them away and stop being pestered, he was forced to tell him the truth.
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